The present invention concerns track-alternating equipment for magnetic-levitation roadways.
One known approach to allowing a change from one magnetic levitation roadway to another adjacent involves special bearers clamped into position at one end at a point of contiguity between two roadways. Each bearer can be inflected toward the other roadway and the bearer accommodated therein. The free ends of the bearers are in alignment, and their midsections follow a prescribed inflection. Several horizontally acting bearer inflecting mechanisms and inflection-maintaining fasteners are accordingly distributed along each bearer between the midsection and the end and can be operated individually or together.
Establishing the bearers"" inflection, their xe2x80x9ccurvaturexe2x80x9d, by means of tabs that act against stops is also known.
German 4 416 819 A1 describes a junction with a bearer that can be inflected resiliently from one roadway toward the other. The inflected ends are in alignment and constitute the junction. The bearer adjoining the resilient end of the other bearer can be resiliently inflected out and away from the adjacent roadway.
This procedure establishes a transition between the roadways even when they are less than twice the open base of the car. This advantage, however, is attained at high engineering expenditure and without decreasing the distance between the roadways all that much.
The object of the present invention is track-alternating equipment of the aforesaid genus that can be employed to change from one magnetic-levitation roadway to another narrowly adjacent by means of relatively simple engineering.
This object is attained in accordance with the present invention by inflectable butting bearers that establish a different junction and in that the inflectable bearers can be shifted out beyond the open base of the car while the second junction is being established by the butting bearers.
One advantage of the present invention is that cars moving in the same direction can be diverted to the adjacent roadway no matter what roadway they are traveling over.
When two two-track contiguity points in accordance with the present invention are employed in series, a car can be diverted back and forth between one track and the other in a development section comprising four inflectable bearers. The equipment described in German 4 416 819 A1 on the other hand requires three junctions and six inflectable bearers for the same procedure.
When, in one practical embodiment of the present invention, the junction is constituted by the inflectable bearers, the inflectable bearers can be shifted out beyond the open base of the car without being subjected to deformation stress, and, when the junction is constituted by the butting bearers, the butting bearers can be shifted out beyond the open base of the car without being subjected to deformation stress.
Another advantage is that either the inflectable bearers or the butting bearers can be shifted out beyond the open base of the car without being subjected to inflection stress. Since this feature prevents mutual inflection stress, the bearers, material fatigue can be kept relatively low.
Another practical feature is that either the butting bearers or the inflectable bearers can be pivoted or rotated out beyond the open base of the car and specifically around a vertical axis.
The butting bearers and the inflectable bearers in another embodiment of the present invention can be accommodated in bearings with a vertical axis of rotation that can lock up to establish a junction.
One or more horizontally acting tabs can pivot the butting bearers and inflectable bearers out beyond the open base of the car. These tabs can preferably also participate in inflecting the bearers to establish a junction.